all right so this next mnemonic is to help you remember the questions that you need to ask when you're fully assessing someone's pain so it's really important that when you're assessing pain you don't just ask are you in pain yes or no can you rate it on a scale of one to ten and all you know is yes I'm in pain and there are six well that really doesn't tell you a whole bunch so it's really important to know very specific things about their pain so you not only know how to treat it appropriately but you also know hey is this a new situation is this different because they might might not always communicate to you when they're having this different kind of pain they may just be answering your question and not really connect to the dots even though it may be kind of obvious so it's really our position as the caregiver to ask the appropriate questions so a pain assessment question so the pneumonic is opq rst so it's just your you know your alphabet and I just kind of remember that it's the letters around P for pain so opq rst the O stands for onset when did this start just was this you know two minutes before you hit the call bell or has this been going on for hours or is this a chronic situation so oh it's on set P is for provoked so what what started this what is this something that you know like I said it's chronic or did you get up to go to the bathroom and since since then your your hip has really been killing you or is did nothing provoke it and all of a sudden you have some pain so that's your P provoke the Q is for quality and another kind of way to remember what quality means is it's what's the character of the pain dull sharp aching burning that kind of stuff tell me about how not just that you're in pain but what does this pain feel like it's really important to know quality especially when you're talking about things like chest pain and whatnot we got to know what kind of quality it is the r is for region where is this hurting or are another R its radiation is it starting one place and then radiating to another place so is this you know your right lower quadrant of your abdomen this is your head where on your head that kind of stuff so where is this hurting region the S is signed severity and symptoms so how bad is this are we in emergency mode where we're we're eight eight out of ten crying you know nine out of ten almost unable to communicate we're in so much pain are there any other symptoms that are involved with this are they having nausea that's a big thing that accompanies pain nausea is this pain setting off other pain is as soon as this pain eliciting anxiety those kind of things so that's your s four signs severity and symptoms and another aspect of signs is did something did you start getting some signs and before this was getting really bad so you know maybe it was a little bit of a dull ache and now all of a sudden it's severe so that's something to know sign severity and symptoms then your T is time of onset duration and intensity so time of onset is a little different so did this start at 2:00 p.m. or did this start months ago and is that continuing what is the duration actually is this the first time this has happened and what time was that so I can quantify in my mind how long this pain is occurring because if you got somebody who's had chronic pain and you're trying you're trying to address it you know we have to have realistic goals and understandings of how we're going to deal with this pain because if you have someone that's coming in with this horrific chronic pain you know it might not be realistic to expect that your Norco that you're gonna give them it's gonna address it you know so it's really important to understand the time of onset duration how long it's been going on and the intensity so maybe did this start at 9:00 a.m. and it's now 5:00 p.m. and it's been going on all day and it's been increasing in intensity or is it increasing and going away increasing going away we need to know is this like sistent increasing ascending pain are we getting some ascension dissension that kind of thing going on so you're cute o pqrst is your mnemonic onset provoke quality region signs severity and symptoms and time of onset duration and intensity so those are things you really want to remember as you're assessing pain as a nurse this has been another episode of the nursing mnemonics podcast by n R s ng comm with your host Katie Kleber RN c CR n to grab all of our nursing cheat sheets head over to NRS ng comm slash freebies that's in our s ng comm slash freebies thank you so much for being here today we love you guys we thank you so much we want to see you guys succeed listen we're all in this together now go out and be your best self today happy nursing